


Righteous fury

by Perspicacia



Series: Adi Gallia, Master of the Order [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Genre: Cameo by Ferus Olin and other novels Jedi, F/M, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-08 08:18:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8837338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perspicacia/pseuds/Perspicacia
Summary: Palpatine didn't expect it. It was too soon for that in his plans: which Jedi would have left the Temple under assault?But Adi had. Ashes in her heart, she had left the younglings and the elders and the wounded for her duty to the galaxy, choosing to stop the Sith instead of protecting her people.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PunsBulletsAndPointyThings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunsBulletsAndPointyThings/gifts).



> Many thanks to the very nice and patient aeremaee for beta-ing ^^

Palpatine could have had his success and his Empire, within a darker universe, if not for a hundred little coincidences. Even the most evil of plans can’t predict and anticipate everything and he failed. He failed because people were hardened by the war, because the Jedi were more lethal than ever - if perhaps slightly unbalanced psychologically speaking - and because Mace Windu, quickly assembling a strike team to go against the newly revealed Sith Lord, had forgotten for a few minutes that Adi Gallia was unexpectedly on Coruscant.

Stranded because her ship had a leaking hyperdrive losing cooling liquid she was in the Temple during Operation Knightfall. Perhaps the Sith lost the war because of that leaking hyperdrive. Can wars be lost or won by a loose bolt? Can wars be lost or won by a murderer turning right or left, by a hero who arrives a few hours late, by a dozen different little decisions?

Or perhaps Palpatine failed simply because his champion, the newly knighted Vader, was still very young. Cin Drallig had kicked Anakin Skywalker’s nicely formed behind all over the training rooms for years and if the student was now more powerful than the teacher, the old ones always had tricks than the young generation hadn’t bothered to learn yet, thinking themselves too good for it. The two padawans that were training with Master Drallig died quickly, even when the poor Master tried to protect them, but they had bought time for Adi Gallia to arrive. Her saber engaged Vader’s in a very classical pattern, saving Drallig’s life. She didn’t try to reason with the dark one that had once been Anakin Skywalker; she had seen too many bodies with lightsaber wounds in her mad rush to the training room, following the feeling of hate like a bloodhound. It was madness, Jedi against Jedi, on their most sacred ground, clones turning on Jedi, clones _made_ for the Jedi and now progressing into the Temple, slaughtering their officers and friends. No, this was no time for reason, because the whole world was mad and crashing around them.

Together, working as a team, the two masters fended off Skywalker but quickly realized this couldn’t end well for them. The power of the Chosen One was a terrible thing and they could see that they would fail and fall under his power. The one that had once been Anakin Skywalker would ravage their brothers and sisters if they didn’t accomplish the impossible and stopped him in that place, right in this moment. Drallig retreated, for only a second, and in a quick exchange of regards, everything was said. Adi engaged Vader and occupied him just enough for the old master to use his last, desperate, trick: a brilliant series of Soresu attacks and a suicidal move at the end, which permitted him to cut his adversary at the same time the dark one killed him, two swift lethal slashes, the yellow blade cutting Anakin Skywalker in two just when his blue blade took Drallig’s last breath.

Cin Drallig died but he took Vader with him and for his sacrifice, for giving his life to save the Councillor and all other innocents that would have died under Vader’s blade, Cin Drallig disappeared, leaving only a cape, a pair of boots and a still lit yellow saber. One with the Force.

Brainwashed, the clones weren’t exactly the soldiers that they could have been. Without the capacity for innovative thinking and without their murderous general, they couldn’t stop the Jedi from pushing back, from reorganizing their defence and barricading themselves in the halls of healing, choosing that place because some people there couldn’t be moved.

The string of curses that Adi Gallia used when she found the message Mace Windu had left for the other councillors would have made a lot of soldiers proud.

Then she left Shaak Ti in charge of the temple, quietly went into the Senate, knocked out a few guards and assassinated Palpatine.

Not the clean arrest that Windu and her poor friends had tried for. No, she put on the blue garb of one of the guards, from the boots to the helmet, masked her presence in rage and sorrow, her heart full of all the dead Jedi she could feel in the Force, all over the galaxy, and she assassinated him.

No time for him to prepare, like he would have had in another galaxy, waiting for stray Jedi.

No time for him to expect it. It was too soon for that in his plans: which Jedi would have left the Temple under assault?

But Adi had. Ashes in her heart, she had left the Temple. The younglings and the elders and the wounded; she had left them for her duty to the galaxy, choosing to stop the Sith instead of protecting her people. Praying to the Force that she wouldn’t come back to a graveyard, she disguised herself in the guard’s robes, like a vulgar assassin searching for a bounty, and put her lightsaber in the organ that pretended to be a heart in that man. Not a word, no reflections like Yoda would have made, giving Palpatine time to prepare himself. Just a lethal wound, right in the back and he was dead before touching the floor.

Murder. As simple as that. Righteous fury, sacrifice and murder: this is how the Jedi survived.

Because of Cin Drallig’s sacrifice and Adi Gallia’s fury, as implacable as divine justice in old religions.

Of course, the war didn’t stop in that second. That would have been too easy and when, in their long history, had the Jedi had it easy?

She found the Vice Chair Mas Amedda, cowering in another room of the chancellor’s office, but he protested when she put him behind a comm.

“You have a choice. As acting Chancellor, you can rescind every order given by your predecessor. Make the intelligent choice.”

“But the Emperor…”

“As I said, you’re now acting Chancellor.”

“You can’t order me around, there are laws! The Jedi are accused. You tried to seize power.”

“There are laws, yes. And the older of them gave Jedi permission to execute Sith on sight and were never rescinded.”

“I’m not a Sith.”

“Then prove it!”

Inside her soul, she felt another Jedi’s spark extinguish, hardening her resolve. Something must have passed in her expression, because he suddenly seized the comm.

Adi felt like weeping.

And now?

Now, the time for clean-up was there. And that would probably take years. Decades.

Now was the time to convene the Senate in plenary session, the time to search for survivors, to search for answers for the clones, to search for her sisters and brothers’ bodies, to search for a way to salvage the Republic, to search for a way to drain the wounds of corruption, to search for a way to obtain peace with the Separatists.

Adi felt like weeping and her despair over all the lives lost and over the hard work waiting for them was so strong that for an instant she almost lost her faith in the Force, questioned if they could salvage something from that clusterfuck, and for a second… For a second she was closer that she ever had been to Falling. It’s not always anger and hate. Despair can be a dark pit and for a second she almost tumbled in it and almost everything was lost. The dying Republic couldn’t handle another powerful Darksider in that instant. But she was made of a stronger metal than that. She blew on the embers of her fury, the fury she had masked herself in to approach Sidious. 

Righteous fury is not the same as anger. This was about justice, more than compassion. Not revenge, because revenge is not the Jedi way, but swift justice, righteous fury and retribution against crimes.

Armed with her righteous fury, Adi Gallia went to work.

And work there was. So much of it. And that work in turn kept the fire of her fury burning.

Work and fury when a concerned citizen brought them back Mace Windu. Her poor friend had lost his hands, his internal organs in such terrible shape because of Sith lightning that the healers were very surprised he had survived this long without a bacta tank and he had cracked his head in his fall. The first things the healers told Adi was that he probably wouldn’t survive, even now, in proper care in the Temple. And if he survived there was no indication he would wake up one day, and if he woke up, no indication of the mental consequences.

Work and fury, for the Senate was populated with idiots. How much she regretted, more than ever, the death of Finnis Valorum. He had been a good friend and in this dark time it would have been easier to put him in place as acting Chancellor after the revelations about Palpatine. After all, the man that the Sith had deposed would have had a vote of sympathy. After a fight that made the bloodiest episodes of the war looking like children’s disputes, Riyo Chuchi took the place of acting Chancellor, but she was so young. When she proposed Adi take the place of her second, something no Jedi had ever accepted in the long history of the Republic, Adi said yes and started dividing her time between the Temple and the Senate.

Work and fury, for she was the one that found the bodies of her friends, Kit Fisto, Agen Koolar and Saesee Tiin in a dark room reeking of such malevolence that she almost threw up. The Force only knew what the Sith Lord wanted to do to their remains in this room full of dark artefacts.

Work and fury, for they refused the help of Judicials. The bodies of their brothers and sisters, the surviving Jedi of the Temple recovered them themselves.

Work and fury because recovering their brothers and sisters’ bodies themselves was only possible on Coruscant. For all the Jedi that had died because of Order 66 on the battlefields, in ships, on other worlds, for all those it were the clones, their very murderers, who brought them back to the Temple.

Work and fury when, after a swift investigation, acting Chancellor Riyo Chuchi discovered the plot that had transformed the clones from friends to foe. That time, Adi really did throw up.

Work and fury, when Master Yoda decided he was too old, too guilty, too blind, and exiled himself to Dagoba, when she thought they had never needed him so much.

 

The Council room felt so empty. From the Councillors, only she, Shaak Ti, Yoda, Mace Windu and Obi-Wan Kenobi had survived. Yoda having resigned, Kenobi doubting every one of his decision since he had learned the fate of his ex-Padawan, Mace being in bacta and in coma, Adi and Shaak Ti sometimes thought they were the only ones shaping the destiny of the Jedi.

And it wasn’t exactly helping their inner peace. Every day, Adi struggled against her fury. Swift justice perhaps was what the galaxy needed, but she didn’t like what that said about her. In the Senate, she had soon gained the reputation of an orator without mercy, an orator that didn’t take prisoners in her interventions, using without hesitation the fact that nobody wanted to contradict in public the Jedi that had killed the last Sith Lord.

But no, Adi didn’t like what that said about her. She didn’t like that she refused the clones the list of surviving Jedi, barricaded in the Temple. She knew that, with the start of the de-chipping, the brothers wanted only confirmation of their friend’s survival or death, but… No, the Jedi were tucking themselves away in the Temple, she herself only going out every day to the Senate and it was better like that. In the Temple, they could defend themselves if needed.

The world needed them but she wasn’t ready to let them go and Shaak Ti and her had many discussions about it. Adi used her position as the senior member of the Council to force her friend’s hand and she didn’t like what that said about her, either. 

She didn’t like her answer, when Senator Amidala, grieving, affirmed to the press that Anakin Skywalker, her husband, couldn’t have done what he was accused off. The woman was grieving, caring for two new-borns, and, yes, perhaps she was terribly insensitive to the dead Jedi that Vader had left right and left to the Temple but… The only good thing that came out of it was Obi-Wan shaking the clouds of shock and depression to try to protect the Senator from Adi and her fury.

“Really, Master Gallia? Suing her for her children?”

“She married one of our underage pupils. **_Your_** underage pupil, when she was a kriffing adult; do you know how many Republic laws she was breaking? And the children are Force Sensitive. What did she expect? She should be happy we’re not attacking her on the charge of being a sexual predator.”

“Master Gallia!”

“He was kriffing underage, Obi-Wan!”

“Yes, he was. But are you sure you’re not making the Senator pay for her husband’s crimes? This marriage will already cost her her place in the Senate, probably her career. Let her grieve in peace.”

For a second she wanted to toss him across the room with the Force, but only for a second, and then she looked at him better. In one month since the almost end of everything his hair had become totally white, a little more every day. Where was the child that had run on Qui-Gon’s heels, not so long ago, when her poor Siri was her Padawan? If he didn’t stop aging so fast, he wouldn’t last long.

She took a long breath, released her frustration and fear into the Force.

“I will leave the Senator in peace if you do one thing for me.”

“Blackmail, Master Gallia?”

“By the Stars, it’s time you start calling me Adi. And yes, blackmail, if you don’t leave me any choice. I want you to go. Stop looking like a lost Bantha calf, I’m not trying to exile you. You look more terrible every day; seeing something other than the Temple will do you good. And I want you to search for the lost Jedi. All those who left before taking their trials. All those who left because of the war. Your Grandpadawan and mine first. And those heretics of Master Altis. Every Force Sensitive you can find and who is volunteering to help rebuild the Order. A lot of them will probably come in our time of need.”

“If we’re asking Master Altis and his people to come back and become one Order with us, we should probably stop calling them heretics… Can we really?”

“Well, if Mace Windu is not ok with it, he can wake up and protest. And we need more people on the Council. Seriously, just the three of us in that room is beginning to feel ridiculous.”

“Were you always this imperious when I was a child?”

“Probably. But you were too busy being vexed from being bossed around by my Padawan to see it.”

He smiled for the first time since he had come back from Utapau and she responded, united in the happy memories of a young Siri.

After a night spent in meditation, just the three of them, kneeling in the Room of the Thousand fountains, their minds open to each other and to the Force, Shaak Ti, Obi-Wan and Adi elevated ten Knights to the Master title and then chose four Masters to vote on the Council with them.

If master Altis accepted, he would have a vote too and the last one was for Mace Windu, if he woke up one day.

That afternoon, after wishing a good trip to Obi-Wan, Adi went back to the Healer’s Hall and sat down next to the bacta tank.

Was she being too harsh? What was justice if not tempered by compassion? Yes, the Senators were scrambling out of her way when she visited the acting Chancellor, but courage had never been their strongest point and her diplomatic skills were as rusty as her tongue could be sharp in the face of privileged beings that didn’t understand the suffering of the people they were supposed to protect…She had always had a reputation for being harsh but fair. Did she become harsher? In a way, they all had. Yes, she had accepted to sit on the trials at the end of the war, but she had no intention to vote for death penalties… or did she? Yes, she was working for the Chancellor, but she had every intention to let that responsibility go after the next election.

By the Force, she needed more meditation. She was not in the habit of letting her thoughts go around like that, too tired for a proper exam of her acts, too tired for everything but sitting down against the glass of the bacta tank. There were so many things to do. Meditation would have to wait.

She needed to meet the elected representative of the clones in the afternoon, and the acting Chancellor had asked for her opinion in a meeting tonight and, and, and…

Just at that second, she heard a noise, like a knee knocking on glass.

In the bacta tank, Mace Windu was looking at her, his beautiful dark eyes wide open and full of questions and Adi felt her heart expand with joy in her chest.

 

*********

 

In the way the wind can announce the rain, the awakening of Mace Windu seemed almost an awakening of the Light Side of the Force.

When he took his first breath outside the tank, a ship entered the Temple‘s hangar bay. Little Ahsoka Tano, not so little anymore, had come back as quickly as she could when she had learned of the end of the war and the need of the Jedi, without waiting for Obi-Wan to find her.

When he took his first meal that wasn’t a drip, the last non-de-chipped clone was found, stunned in the back by one of his brothers, and woke up without the voice of a Sith in his head.

When his right hand prosthesis was finally fitted correctly, Master Altis and his people touched down on Coruscant, bearing news of Obi-Wan, still busy collecting Force Sensitives left and right in the Outer Rim.

When he took his first steps unassisted, Ferus Olin, Siri’s wayward Padawan, and his husband were there, and Ferus knelt before Adi, accepting her offer to help him finish his training. He had grown so much it wouldn’t take long.

When the last drip was taken out, the clones officially received Republic citizenship.

When the new Code was officially proclaimed, he was using his first prosthesis to tinker with the second.

When he was released from the Hall of Healings, the Separatists officially asked for peace. With the revelations about the Sith Lord playing puppeteer in the whole war, and playing both sides, even the most enraged of them was rewriting their priorities.

And then Mace refused to go back on the Council.

“Force help me, Mace Windu, if you pronounce the words “I’m going to Dagobah”, I will toss you out of a window myself!” Adi swore, storming into his room.

He was fully dressed, to the cape.

“By the Force, you’re going right now?”

“No, I’m taking the Initiates to the market. They need to see non-Force Sensitive people, before they forget those exist. We’ll bring back fresh fruits, I’m getting sick of eating rations because you fear someone will try to poison the Jedi. And when I come back, you’ll meditate, even if I have to lock you in a room. Your temper is becoming… Well, I’m sure the Republic can take care of itself for a few hours.”

He took her hands in his prosthesis. They were slightly colder than human skin. She was still trying to push her fear about him departing into the Force. He was probably right about her need of meditation.

“Your Padwan and that husband of his…”

“Roan.”

“And the new Code…”

“You could have come to the vote! I don’t know why you refused!”

 “Adi, what I’m trying to say is this: you saved the Order in a time of great despair. And I’m not speaking of killing Sidious. You brought our lost brothers and sisters back under our wing, or perhaps they took us back. You opened our ranks and our house and now it’s time for us to go outside again. Some conspiracy theories are already claiming that you and Kenobi are the only Force Users left alive. I’m stepping down. To be honest, you’re already our Grand Master, it only needs to be made official. I’m stepping down and the Force whispers to me that you’ll be the one we need to rebuild.”

“That still doesn’t make sense. Why can’t you stay on the Council?”

“Adi, I won’t go on the Council again because I think that would be too much power between the two of us. Once, we refused each other to stay in the Jedi Order. But Ferus Olin will become a great knight, married or not, and if Obi-Wan thinks I don’t know he’s smuggling his grandpadawan to the Chancellor Chuchi -”

“What!”

“That doesn’t… We are not talking about Chuchi and Tano right now… Once, we refused each other to stay in the Jedi Order but now, this isn’t irreconcilable, and if you still want me, I would be happy being only the Grand Master’s partner.”

When was the last time he had smiled at her like that? Stern Master Windu, shy and hopeful?

What could she say, but yes?

And, her hand intertwined with his prosthesis, they went back out into the galaxy and the Jedi followed them.

**Author's Note:**

> Note: 1) In the promotional pictures, Cin Drallig has a blue lightsaber, sometimes a green, but Star Wars wikia explains that the actor wanted it to be yellow and Lucas said no. So, it’s now yellow in this fic and you’ll need to pry that headcanon of me with a crowbar.  
> 2) Master Altis has very strong opinions about the Code in one of Karen Travis’s novels about the Clone Wars. Ferus Olin is a character of the Last of the Jedi and Jedi Quest series.


End file.
